Tag Archive | "healthcare data"

Huge changes are ahead in healthcare. From the Affordable Care Act to new service models to advances in health and fitness technology, the field is definitely in a growth and change mode.

One critical dynamic involves what is known as “big data.” Unlike the smaller bits and pieces of information healthcare providers have always amassed on patients and outcomes, big data has the potential to aggregate the kinds of information that can be truly informative for all stakeholders: consumers, physicians, healthcare companies, and businesses.

Nudge, a leading health and fitness app, recently launched what’s being called the industry’s first HIPAA-compliant tool that lets health professionals analyze data from an individual’s health and sports wearable device.

Nudge Coach is a web-based platform that provides tailored feedback from the analyzed data to serve up helpful advice and support in areas of detected concern. The platform even contains a private-messaging tool that enables the health professional to communicate with users immediately to offer feedback in real-time.

It was announced during this week’s HIMSS conference that Verizon, Motorola and BoxTone are teaming up to develop secure solutions for Android-based devices and applications with the aim of making the platform suitable for health IT implementation.

The jointly created offering leverages BoxTone’s automated “Enterprise Mobility Management” (EMM) software platform on select Motorola devices,such as the DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX smartphones, as well as DROID XYBOARD 10.1 and 8.2 tablets, all of which leveraging Verizon’s 4G LTE network. As such, healthcare organizations can now “reliably deploy Android-based mobile devices and apps that are designed to help them meet strict compliance requirements, including privacy measures outlined in the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).”

Many of the recent high-profile data breaches involving sensitive health information had to do with lost or stolen mobile devices, which has brought device security and proper encryption into the spotlight. ”We agree that this is an area of security that appears to need specific focus,” the NPRM for Stage 2 Meaningful Use states. “Recent HHS analysis of reported breaches indicates that almost 40% of large breaches involve lost or stolen devices. Had these devices been encrypted, their data would have been secured.”

Though last year’s Data Design Diabetes Challenge just wrapped up not too long ago, the 2012 edition is already getting under way.

During the Care Innovations Summit in Washington D.C. recently, Dennis Urbaniak — VP of Sanofi — announced the 2012 challenge with this year’s focus on “driving innovation in the quality, delivery, and cost of diabetes care.” The mobile application “Ginger.io” won last year’s challenge.

The Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), the largest in the nation, has announced a partnership with AT&T’s Healthcare Community Online to provide a highly-secure, scalable and flexible clinical interface integration platform.

IHIE covers more than ten million patients, more than 19,000 physicians, and over 80 facilities, and currently has more than four billion pieces of clinical data in its repository — delivering three million highly-secure health transactions daily. It works with hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics and physician practices to ensure that health information is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there to help improve care coordination and patient outcomes.

A new initiative developed by the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s Office of the Chief Privacy Officer, working with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights was launched recently to better understand the privacy and security implications of processing healthcare data via mobile devices.

The goal of the new initiative is to develop “an effective and practical way to bring awareness and understanding to those in the clinical sector to help them better secure and protect health information while using mobile devices.”